Enter Pale Death (32 page)

Virbio, he could have sworn, had recognised him and was pitifully trying to form a word with his lips.

Joe repeated what he took to be the sound. “ ‘Die?’ Did you say—‘Die’?” He’d had never been able to deceive a man whose case was hopeless with good-hearted lies. Quietly he said: “Yes, old chap. I’m afraid I think that’s the likely outcome. Not much I can do. Look here—would you like me to pray with you? I could have a word with God on your behalf.” He bent down, took hold of the lolling right hand and held it.

Whatever their professed religion or lack of one, men usually, at the end, sought after the beliefs of their youth. God, Allah, Jehova, Vishnu, to Joe they were all a central idea whatever their tribal names and he would gladly call on any of them if it brought comfort to a dying man. He watched as Virbio’s eyes closed
emphatically at the word ‘God.’ Dismissive? In the flood of pain the man must be suffering, could Joe possibly pick out an element of something so petty as frustration? Was Joe reading too much into the expression? He didn’t think so. Then, blindingly, he understood. “Not ‘die’!
Di
ana!”

The eyes opened again in response to his re-interpretation.

“You want to pray to your goddess!”

Joe went on holding the chill hand and, not entirely satisfied he was doing the right thing, he began to whisper some lines of Ben Jonson he’d been set to learn when a boy on a school bench, his “Hymn To Diana.”

“Queen and huntress, chaste and fair
,

Now the sun is laid to sleep
,

Seated in thy silver chair
,

State in wonted manner keep:

Hesperus entreats thy light
,

Goddess excellently bright.”

He couldn’t remember all three verses so he said the first one over again and stumbled on, improvising: “Goddess excellently bright, thou that mak’st a day of night, light the way for this your faithful servant, Virbio, and guide him into the happy fields of Elysium.”

The eyes held his, unafraid, even mocking. Then suddenly, with the timing of a tough East End audience delivering its judgement on a third-rate comedian, the throat emitted a derisive gargle followed by a last gobbet of blood and the man expired, a look of infinite scorn fixed on his features.

Only then did Joe allow himself to behave like a policeman. First, he leaned over the body and put a finger behind the remaining ear to find the pulse spot, performing the automatic physical checks that death had indeed occurred. Then he stood and
assessed the scene. An apparent suicide. No sign of another presence in the room, though Hunnyton and his forensics boys would go through it with a fine-tooth comb.

The room was not at all the scene of beer-swilling debauchery he’d feared. No empty rum bottles. No floozy hiding under the bed. It was the well-ordered and austerely clean quarters of a military man. Cupboards holding heaven knew what were firmly closed. There were no dirty dishes or clothes lying about. Whatever he’d worn to the pub last night must be in the laundry basket. He’d been neatly clad in striped pyjamas before the shooting. His boots were lined up under the bed waiting for his feet. Joe’s exploratory fingernail run between the sole and the upper came away with not-yet-dry boot blacking. He must have attended to them on his return last evening.

Questions flooded into Joe’s mind. Had he killed himself? In London, the hopeless and destitute threw themselves off bridges and under tube trains. In the country, where guns were plentiful and despair rampant, self-inflicted death by game rifle was not uncommon. Why? If not self-inflicted—who? Would a man planning suicide have left the door ajar? Would he have polished his boots and tidied his room? It was not impossible.

Joe stemmed the rampaging flow of enquiry. That was not his task. This was Hunnyton’s backyard. The superintendent would, within the hour, set wheels in motion to launch an official police enquiry and have the place turned upside down, every item in it examined. But Joe would take a few precious moments to absorb his surroundings, to think and take note. He would take care not to move about unnecessarily himself. By dashing in to attend to the dying man Joe had already trodden in the blood that had run down his extended hand and pooled on the floor. His finger on the man’s neck would need to be accounted for in the report. His was the kind of presence that gave him a headache when he was
conducting an enquiry. He thanked God that Hunnyton would be in charge.

With a jolt he remembered the offering he’d made to the goddess when he’d first passed this way. Lord! If the Cambridge police discovered the shining cap badge of a fusilier regiment tucked into the palm of Diana’s hand and they linked it with the regiment of a certain visiting man from the Met, he’d come in for much scorn and laughter and could waste hours of police time. He made his way to the statue intent on recovering it if it was still there. Cap badges had been a favourite thing to give out to girlfriends after the war. Some girls had them made up into brooches. Joe knew one young lady who’d collected a dozen. He’d scattered these flirty and fashionable tokens like birdseed when he came marching home. With one exception, they’d been accepted with grace and laughter. Dorcas had put hers back in his hand, he remembered, with a sigh of affected sophistication. He smiled. He’d quite expected the same reaction from the goddess. She and Dorcas had much in common, he’d always thought.

Diana had her back to the cottage and was twenty paces distant. He was almost upon her before he caught the glint underneath the pointed nose of her hound. Still there, thank God! But as he reached for it he saw that there was something else in the hollow palm. Held down by the brass token was a sheet of paper folded over and over into a small rectangle. On the outside fold was written “Sandilands.”

Joe put his cap badge back into his pocket and unfolded the letter.

He knew where he’d seen the writing before. “Not what you’d call educated is it?” Ben had said. In pencil, the carefully formed but rough lettering had spelled out a list of herbs. Here? A suicide note? Feeling foolish, Joe realised that the dying Virbio had tried with his last breath to send him in the direction of the statue of Diana to find this and had not been asking for a priestly
intervention on his behalf to the goddess. As the blundering policeman had subjected him to the recitation of a barely remembered ode, Virbio’s final thoughts must have been unprintable.

Goddess excellently bright, perhaps. Copper laughably dull, certainly.

Not a suicide note, he was assuming. Explanations, recriminations, confessions, accusations, such notes were meant to be found and read. He’d come across them in plain sight on desks, tucked into pockets, tacked to the wall above the corpse, even, in one case, clenched between the dead man’s teeth. They were never secreted away.

Dejected and full of foreboding, Joe sat down on a log that seemed to have been put there for the purpose and scanned the document. The man’s spelling might not be up to much but he seemed to have plenty to say.

CHAPTER 19

When you read this, copper, I’ll be long gone. He’s not going to get away with it, your Lord and Master. I told him what would happen if he turned awkward and now he’ll learn I meant it
.

He gave me my marching orders for Midsummer Day. That’s today. Got his London lawyer to send me the eviction papers. Didn’t have the guts to do it himself. No more billet. No more pay. Says he hasn’t the wherewithall. Likely tale, eh?

Never thought he’d call my bluff but he has. Even sent one of his tame police bully-boys to make sure I go quietly. At least I merited an ‘Assistant Commissioner’ from the Yard! PC Plod from the village wouldn’t have cut it. Well sod you both!

I bet he’s told you nothing. Eh? Aren’t I right? Well it’s time someone blew the whistle before he ruins many more lives. Read on, copper, if you want to know the truth about Truelove
.

1908 it was when I did him the service. One of the maids—Phoebe her name was—got pregnant. Not surprised—she was a lovely lass but she was just a kid. They both were. He must have got her into trouble when he was home from school at Easter. Always wanted too much, too early, James Truelove
.

By the summer holidays she was desperate. Told no one but him. Wanted to know what he was going to do about it. The usual. He didn’t want his old man to find out or his ma who was in the last month of confinement herself. But more than anything he was afeared that Hunnybun might get to hear and then the wrath of God would have descended on him. No one else to talk to, so he turned to me. Man of the world. A Londoner. He thought I’d know what to do
.

He wasn’t wrong. I knew a place in Ipswich where they’d fix it—for a sum. It’ll cost you, I says. How much? he wants to know. I’ve spent my month’s allowance. Pinch something then I says. House is full of stuff. Silver, gold necklace. He comes up with 2 little paintings. Silly sod! Not so easy to shift as something you can melt down, easy to trace as a signature! I managed. But I had to go up to London to do it. I even conned a receipt of sorts out of the bloke—he was a cousin of mine and owed me one. Here attached for your perusal. Wouldn’t stand up two minutes in a court of law but a copper like you can read between the lines. And Alf who signed it has previous. Got sent down for five in the Pen in 1912 for fencing stolen goods so that’s corroboration as you’d say. Check it—it’s your job. Twenty quid wasn’t near the value but then. It was enough to do the job and pay me for my troubles
.

Something went wrong for him. Church-going girl, she must have refused to go through with it. She certainly never went near Ipswich. Next thing she’s floating in the pondweed and who was the unlucky bloke who found her? Yours truly. Killed herself? Course she did! And that’s the story I put out. But I told Truelove it would look really bad for him if I were to tell anyone what had really happened. Wasn’t that the young master I’d glimpsed larking about with a young girl in the moat an hour before? Teaching her to swim? Two kids having a splash about? Oh, yer! Holding her up by the heels was a funny way of going about it. I only had to take my tale to Hunnybun and James would have been mincemeat. Adam H. is just like his real dad. A ba-lamb until he’s riled and then you notice the size of his fists. I’ve seen the old man lay about him … but never mind … those Boers asked for it, whatever they say
.

When James found himself a rich woman I asked for more. He wouldn’t have wanted the lovely Lavinia to know what was in his past. He coughed up, good as gold. Her gold I suppose when you come to think of it! She never knew where half of it went, silly cow!

I’ve had a good innings and my bank book at the Co-op will keep my sister and me comfortable. It’s no life out here for a 50-year-old with arthritis anyhow. I’ve had enough. I should have shopped him to his wife and scarpered when I had the chance. She was round here every month leaving bribes to Diana. Desperate to present the Trueloves with an heir. Why, she kept asking, why am I being punished? Should have spoken out. Told her it was a judgement not on her but on her husband that he has no son and heir. He has no trouble deflowering virginal maids and getting them up the duff. It’s the Goddess’s revenge for Phoebe
.

But you’ll do, copper. Tell whoever you want. Shout it from the housetops. James Truelove who thinks he can be the next prime minister is a debaucher of young girls, a thief and a murderer. That’s what you have to tell the world
.

T
HE VENOM REEKING
up from the page was almost tangible. Joe could hardly bear to hold the paper in his trembling hands. “No, you swine,” he muttered to himself, “if I shout anything, I shall announce to the world that the human scum who went by the name of Virbio was a Peeping Tom, a liar, a parasitic leach, a blackmailer and snake in the grass. And then I shall get seriously disrespectful!”

Joe had never had so little evidence on which to base an accusation, nor yet such certainty that his suspicions were justified. He turned an angry face to the cottage. “And if someone hadn’t already pulled that trigger and rid the world of a pullulating ulcer, I’d have done the job myself.”

H
E STOOD, GATHERED
himself, and set off at a brisk trot back to the Hall. He’d covered twenty yards when the shot rang out.

High and wide to the right, it cracked past his head sending him crashing to his knees. He rolled over twice into the deep shadow of an oak tree, coming to rest, breathless and alarmed, behind the four foot thick barrier of its trunk.

Who the hell?

N
OT
V
IRBIO
’
S GUN
.
The first barrel of someone else’s. A poacher? One of his fellow guests revelling in early morning country pursuits? A resentful villager putting the wind up one of the Toffs up at the Hall? Probably their weekend sport. The comforting answers flooded in, the brain attempting to neutralise the unacceptable messages being sent by his senses. Joe rejected each one. Out there within easy range for any reasonable shooter was a man with a gun and a second shot up the spout. The gun was trained on him.

Or was it?

The bullet had smacked into the tree ahead of him, some twelve feet from the ground, he thought. He noted the place. The broad-leaved lime had stopped the bullet with all the solidity of its fine-grained wood. He didn’t want to imagine what it would have done to the soft spot between his shoulder blades. Bad aim or warning shot? Joe waited, listening. No sound. Flat to the ground, he risked an eye around the trunk. No movement. He rolled over and checked the other side. All clear. Silently he
wriggled to his feet and picked up a stout twig. Plastering his front to the rough bark, he took off his cap and speared it on the end of the twig. Crouched, he held it up beyond the tree at head level and waited for the explosion. A crude trick, but it had worked with helmets on bayonets in the trenches. A keyed-up man with his finger on the trigger—even an experienced soldier—would instinctively blast away at the sudden appearance of exactly what he was looking for in the place he was expecting it.